Kyle Kraus was a participant or observer in the following events:

Timothy McVeigh, a nascent white supremacist and survivalist (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) who is in the process of taking “early termination” from the US Army after being denied a position in Special Forces (see January - March 1991 and After), moves back in with his father in Pendleton, New York. Initially, he joins a National Guard unit and tries unsuccessfully to join the US Marshals. He is formally discharged from the Army on December 31, 1991. His final psychological assessment from the Army shows him to be under extreme stress and experiencing a powerful sense of disillusionment with the federal government. In January 1992, he goes to work for Burns International Security Services in Buffalo after leaving the Guard (see June 1992), and quickly rises to the rank of inspector. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810; Serrano, 1998, pp. 48; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001; CNN, 12/17/2007] (A New York Times report later says McVeigh leaves the Army in early 1992. A book about McVeigh, One of Ours, claims that McVeigh returns to Pendleton after leaving the Army around Christmas of 1991.) [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 44]Depressed, Suicidal, Detached, Enraged - Over time, McVeigh becomes increasingly depressed and reportedly considers suicide; friends and colleagues will describe him as deteriorating both mentally and physically, and, in the words of the New York Times, will describe him as “an increasingly unstable man who wavered between gloomy silences and a hair-trigger temper, who lost so much weight he seemed anorexic, and who could follow simple orders but could not handle pressure or take independent action.” Lynda Haner-Mele, a supervisor for Burns Security in Kenmore, New York, later recalls working with McVeigh at the Niagara Falls Convention Center. She remembers calling him “Timmy” and worrying about his weight loss. “He seemed almost lost, like he hadn’t really grown up yet,” she will say. She is unaware of his Army service, later recalling: “He didn’t really carry himself like he came out of the military. He didn’t stand tall with his shoulders back. He was kind of slumped over.… That guy did not have an expression 99 percent of the time. He was cold. He didn’t want to have to deal with people or pressure. Timmy was a good guard, always there prompt, clean, and neat. His only quirk was that he couldn’t deal with people. If someone didn’t cooperate with him, he would start yelling at them, become verbally aggressive. He could be set off easily. He was quiet, but it didn’t take much.” Increasingly Radicalized - McVeigh becomes increasingly radicalized, growing more disenchanted with the idea of a federal government and distressed about the possibility of a federal crackdown on gun ownership. He talks about the government forcibly confiscating the citizenry’s guns and enslaving citizens. He writes angry letters to newspapers and his congressman on subjects such as his objection to inhumane slaughterhouses and a proposed law prohibiting the possession of “noxious substances,” and warns against an impending dictatorship if action is not soon taken (see February 11, 1992). He urges friends to read a novel, The Turner Diaries (see 1978), which tells the story of a white supremacist revolt against the US government and the extermination of minorities, and gives copies to his friends and relatives. He begins acquiring an arsenal of guns, and sets up a generator and a store of canned food and potable water in his basement so that he would be self-sufficient in case of emergency. He applies to join the Ku Klux Klan, but decides against it because, he believes, the KKK is too focused on race and not enough on gun rights. The Times will later write: “While there was no firm evidence that Mr. McVeigh belonged to any organized right-wing paramilitary or survivalist groups, there was considerable evidence that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs. He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he read their literature, and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked, and traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable support, according to numerous interviews.” In the summer of 1992, McVeigh moves to Michigan to stay with his old Army friend Terry Nichols, telling friends he is leaving to find a “free state” in which to live. McVeigh’s and Nichols’s shared hatred of the federal government continues to grow. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; CNN, 12/17/2007] Reportedly, McVeigh tells people that the Army has placed a computer chip in his buttocks to keep him under surveillance. [People, 5/8/1995] McVeigh’s fellow security guard, Carl Edward Lebron Jr., later recalls long conversations with McVeigh that center around “politics, secret societies, some religion and conspiracy theories,” UFOs, and government conspiracies to addict its citizens to illegal drugs. Lebron wonders if McVeigh himself might belong to a secret society of some sort, perhaps a Freemason sect. Lebron will recall McVeigh showing him Ku Klux Klan newsletters and gold coins, some minted in Canada. Lebron becomes worried enough about McVeigh’s apparent instability to tape-record some of their conversations, and keep notes of what McVeigh tells him. What seems to worry Lebron the most is McVeigh’s talk about stealing weapons from Army bases. In August, McVeigh quits his job at Burns, telling coworkers: “I got to get out of this place. It’s all liberals here.” Lebron bids him goodbye, saying, “Stay out of trouble,” to which McVeigh replies: “I can’t stay out of trouble. Trouble will find me.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 48-57] Law professor Douglas O. Linder will later speculate that McVeigh’s radicalization may have been triggered, and was certainly deepened, by the FBI’s raid on the Ruby Ridge compound of white supremacist Randy Weaver (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992). [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] McVeigh later tells his lawyers that during this time, he became increasingly stressed because of what he will call his “heightened sense of awareness of what the news was really saying.” He becomes increasingly obsessed with the news, raging at politicians for trying to blend politics and the military, and at the government for “strong-arming other countries and telling them what to do.” He becomes increasingly enraged by what he calls the increasing anti-gun sentiment in the US, and the “liberal mindset that all things in the world could be solved by discussion.” He learned in the military that most problems can best be solved by aggression, he will say, citing physical fights he had with fellow soldiers and angry confrontations with fellow security workers. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]Movements Cloudy - McVeigh’s movements are somewhat cloudy during this period. A New York Times report will say that McVeigh and Nichols may have lived together in Marion, Kansas, not Michigan, and McVeigh may have moved to Kingman, Arizona, during this time or sometime later. [New York Times, 4/23/1995]Future Oklahoma City Bomber - McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City, with Nichols’s aid (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Haner-Mele will have difficulty believing McVeigh orchestrated the bombing. “Timmy just wasn’t the type of person who could initiate action,” she will say. “He was very good if you said, ‘Tim, watch this door—don’t let anyone through.’ The Tim I knew couldn’t have masterminded something like this and carried it out himself. It would have had to have been someone who said: ‘Tim, this is what you do. You drive the truck.’” [New York Times, 5/4/1995] McVeigh’s cousin Kyle Kraus, who received a copy of The Turner Diaries from McVeigh, puts the book away until after the bombing, when he will reread some of it. Horrified, he will contact the FBI; the copy will become an exhibit in McVeigh’s criminal trial (see August 10, 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 51]

For the first day of testimony in the Timothy McVeigh trial (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997), prosecutor Joseph Hartzler puts on an array of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. Cynthia Klaver, a Water Resources Board attorney who accidentally caught the sound of the explosion on tape (see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995), is the first to testify. The first piece of evidence introduced is the copy of the violently racist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978) that McVeigh gave to his cousin Kyle Kraus (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). During the trial, the prosecution presents an array of evidence, including computer graphics, video presentations, actual pieces of the Ryder truck used to deliver the bomb, hundreds of pages of documents, phone records and motel registration cards (see Early May 1995 and After), receipts showing the purchase of ammonium nitrate (see May 1, 1995), storage locker receipts (see May 1, 1995 and After), and a large scale model of downtown Oklahoma City, featuring a plastic replica of the Murrah Building that snaps apart. Marine Captain Michael Norfleet, whose wounds suffered in the blast forced him to retire from service, tells of his battle to escape the devastated building. Helena Garrett tells of losing her infant son Tevin in the blast; another victim testifies to seeing Garrett hysterically attempting to find her child in the fire and rubble. She recalls watching rescue workers bringing out the bodies of dead children and wrapping them in sheets. She did not find her son; rescue workers found her son’s body three days later. Hartzler also shows the jury a videotape made by a television cameraman minutes after the attack; the tape shows dazed, bloodied survivors stumbling through smoke and debris. A child’s voice can be heard crying: “Daddy! Daddy!” Many in the courtroom weep during the videotape and the victims’ testimonies, including members of the jury, prosecution lawyers, and even one of McVeigh’s lawyers. The first day of testimony establishes a pattern that will hold throughout the prosecution’s case: begin the day with technical and forensic evidence, and end with emotional testimony from witnesses, survivors, and family members of those slain in the blast. The prosecution presents more victims during the days of testimony later in the week. On the first day, and throughout the trial, McVeigh’s co-defendant, Terry Nichols, sits in the front row of the courtroom, watching the proceedings. [New York Times, 4/26/1997; Serrano, 1998, pp. 280-281]

Virginia gun dealer Gregory Pfaff testifies that Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, August 10, 1995, and April 24, 1997) wanted to buy detonation cord from him six months before the Murrah Building was destroyed by a bomb (see Late September or October, 1994). McVeigh was so eager to buy “det cord,” Pfaff testifies, that he offered to drive from Arizona to Virginia to pick it up. Pfaff says he met McVeigh at gun shows several times during 1992; in September or October 1994, he testifies, McVeigh called him and “asked if I could get him detonation cord.” Pfaff says that he did not sell “det cord,” a highly regulated item, but did not want to offend McVeigh, so he told him he could not ship it within the US. McVeigh then offered to come to Virginia from Arizona to pick it up. “It was an awful long way to drive,” Pfaff recalls telling McVeigh, but he says McVeigh told him “it didn’t matter, that he needed it bad.” The sale never took place. Pfaff is one of 14 prosecution witnesses to take the stand, all testifying to their knowledge of McVeigh’s bomb-construction scheme. Kyle Kraus, McVeigh’s second cousin, says McVeigh mailed him a copy of The Turner Diaries (see 1978) in 1991, while Kraus was still in high school. The novel is an inflammatory racist work that prosecutors say McVeigh used as an ideological blueprint for the bombing (see April 24, 1997). The prosecution enters the novel as Exhibit #1. Kraus, who with other witnesses testifies that McVeigh has been thinking about explosives and a racially motivated “civil war” for a long time, says that at Christmas of 1991, when McVeigh was at home on leave from the Army (see January - March 1991 and After), he asked Kraus what he thought of the book. Kraus says he told McVeigh the book was “powerful” and added that it “would be very, you know, very frightening if it really did come to this.” McVeigh told him, according to Kraus’s testimony, that “if the government continued its strong hold,” the country could face “a civil war.” Dana Rogers, the finance director of Colorado mail-order house Paladin Press, testifies that McVeigh ordered several books about weapons and explosives, including one titled “Homemade C4.” The book’s description in Paladin’s catalogue, as read by Rogers, says: “Serious survivors knew that the day may come when they need something more powerful than commercial dynamite or common improvised explosives. For blowing bridges, shattering steel, and derailing tanks, they need C-4.” The explosive is “not legally available to civilian and is hard to come by on the black market,” Rogers says; the book offers a recipe with “legal, common, and inexpensive” ingredients. Helen May Mitchell, an employee of the Clark Lumber Company in Herington, Kansas, says she rented a storage locker to a “Shawn Rivers,” who gave alleged co-conspirator Terry Nichols’s mailing address in Marion as his contact information. Though Mitchell testifies that she cannot recall what “Rivers” looked like, prosecutors say “Rivers” was another alias used by McVeigh. Robert D. Nattier, the president and general manager of the Mid-Kansas Cooperative, testifies that a man calling himself “Mike Havens” bought 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on September 30, 1994 (see September 30, 1994) and again on October 18, 1994 (see October 18, 1994) from the store in McPherson, Kansas. “Havens” has been identified as a psuedonym used by McVeigh; the McPherson store is 37 miles west of the ranch near Marion, Kansas, where Nichols worked (see (September 30, 1994)). Nattier’s testimony is bolstered by testimony from FBI agent Louis Michalko, who tells the jury of finding receipts by a “Mike Havens” for 4,000 pounds of fertilizer from the McPherson branch of the co-op (see May 1, 1995 and After). A rancher, Timothy Patrick Donahue, testifies that on Nichols’s last day of work on the ranch, September 30, 1994 (see February - September 30, 1994), he saw McVeigh standing outside Nichols’s home. That same evening, antiques dealer Marion Ogden says he saw McVeigh alone at the Nichols house, and he saw guns stored behind Nichols’s living-room sofa. Sharri Furman, an employee of the Boots-U-Store-It storage locker center in Council Grove, Kansas, testifies that a “Joe Kyle” rented a storage locker there on October 17. She cannot remember what “Kyle” looked like, but prosecutors say Nichols used the name as an alias (see October 17, 1994). She identifies Nichols as “Ted Parker,” who rented a storage unit on November 7, 1994 (see November 7, 1994). [New York Times, 5/2/1997; New York Times, 5/3/1997; Chicago Tribune, 5/3/1997]

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